Chris Brogan is at it again. Chris Brogan, who I really have no idea of, is apparently a very famous person on the Internet and the social media scene. Dude apparently is an inspiration to many, esp. with his annual New Year post “My 3 Words for 20XX”.

In 2011, his 3 words were: Reinvest. Package. Flow.

For 2012, his 3 words are (or will be?): Temple. Untangle. Practice.

Well, Mr. Brogan, I guess I have to thank you for inspiring the head honcho of my company to ask all of us to come up with 3 words to laser-focus our energy/ambition/breathing towards. Unfortunately, the fist thing that jumped into my mind was:

Move. That. Bus. 

And then I was stuck. I shook my fists at your well-defined cheek bones, Ty Pennington! The rest of my ideas were more like a plea for help from an insane asylum:

From Elly @ Bugginword:

Evangelize.  Inform.  Seduce.  Innovate.  Inspire.  Support is for bras, dudes.

Distract.  Disarm.  Destroy.

[Can we just describe you instead?]  Pure, undiluted possibility.  <— Seriously, with friends like this, who needs bras?!

How about “Social Media Whore,” Lin?  I mean whore in the nicest possible way.  Obviously.   <— She gets me. She really really gets me. 

From Kelly @ Dufmanno’s Blog:

Fight, win, destroy. [that would be mine]  —> Yes, Kelly, nobody would dare to doubt it. 

Astound, problem flatten, monarch in training.

Create, confound, excite. [I'm getting a great visual of you with flames shooting out of your eyes but you probably don't do that at work. Can you pretend you are a prehistoric warrior goddess with a battle axe because that just adds pages of job titles to your resume.]  —> Srly, I have the best ladies in the world ever. No bras! Woohoo!

Destroyer of enemies.

Thwarter of evil.

Creator of animal pelts…

From Sue @ Lagunatic:

Instigate. Resonate. Fascinate.

Can you submit “I like boobies” just to see what they say?  —> So. Fucking. Tempting. Unfortunately my family’s health insurance depends on my employment… 

From Vapid @ A Vapid Blonde:

Divide. Conquer. Unite. (or Untie, if they are hot)

Solver. Slayer. Soother.Rockstar Fire Fucker… (not sure they would like that one)

Personally my mission statement would be Cocktail Maker, ShakHER.

From Amanda @ Brilliant Sulk:

How about a fun, interesting seminar: Noose making 101

From Patty @ Patty Punker:

drop kick this (motherfucker)

my shit rips!

veritable meth lab

old like deniro (or pacino, you pick)

Then Elly (aka Ms. Bugginword) followed up with this email:

 Is anyone else craving INXS now?  Can you deliver your three words with a boom box, some posterboard, and a giant black marker?

Yes. Yes. Yes!  Remember these and the awesome music video?

With my ladyfriends’ encouragement, support and blind faith, right now, sitting in my official corporate profile is my 3 word mission that says:

Desegregate. Mediate. Alleviate.

Related posts:

1. NOT from the Onion, surprisingly: Russian analyst predicts USA to break up into 5 countries!
2. Teaching Kids Simple Words: Part 1

1. Buying a duvet cover in DEEP RED rather than white like those nice glistening duvet covers in hotels

Around 1 am today, as I was wrapping up my work and was looking forward to hitting my head against that pillow, I heard my 9-year-old boy make a familiar sound. A sound from the past. A sound I have forgotten. A sound that makes every mother’s heart skip a beat while screaming “OMFG Not again?!” inside. I rushed upstairs and confirmed my worst fear.

He looked like this.

The green plants covering his entire upper body, shoulders, back, neck and cheeks would be regurgitated broccoli.

And the green swamp would be my bed.

And like the Swamp Thing, Mr. Monk has left a trail of bits and pieces of his green self as he moved about.

2. Agreeing to settle for the fake, and cheaper, down comforter that The Husband found at an outlet. Can we all cheer for the words “machine wash” on the tag?

Broccoli. Mr. Monk had eaten a whole bowl of broccoli for dinner. And cupcakes with blue frosting. And chicken. I was able to remember the dinner menu while surveying the aftermath. It’s amazing how the frosting retained its neon blue color.

3. Deciding to leave the plastic cover over my bed long after the kids had stopped wetting the bed. Deep down I know it’s because I was too lazy to do anything about it. Laziness pays off sometimes, just remember to pass it off as being laid-back, or zen-ish.

Otherwise there would be no trash bag big enough to toss my memory foam bed into it the way I was forced to toss my memory foam pillow into a trash bag and sealed it with a hazardous material sticker.

4. Buying the Christmas Tree bedsheet set on massive sale from a website that is not Pottery Barn.

I followed my first instinct, crumpled up the bedsheet and tossed it into a trash bag. I am sitting here right now staring at it, trying to decide how awful it would be if I simply throw it away so I do not have to deal with the swamp within.

Since I only paid $20 for the fitted sheet, I now have the liberty to even ponder this. If it were one of those $300 Pottery Barn gilded* bedsheets, I’d be crying right now.

5. (The credit should go to The Husband for this one) Buying new washer and dryer for me even though I strongly dislike receiving appliances as gifts. Don’t try to kill two birds with one vacuum cleaner, just sayin’ man. You would not like to receive an iron, do you? But tonight? Hallelujah for FRONT LOADING, baby!**

My 9-year-old. Before he turns into the Swamp Thing.

This is why instead of having my head firmly on my pillow, I am listening to Maroon 5 on Spotify while laundering the duvet cover, bed cover, comforter, towels and pillow cases in the comfort of my own home.

6. Starting my blog many moons ago.

Minor disasters and mishaps in life seem so much more tolerable, even humorous, now that I can see all of them as potential blogging fodders. “Oh, I am picking up regurgitated brocoli at 2 in the morning. How funny!” Standing from outside looking in. Everything seems hilarious as if I were watching a sitcom based on my own life.

So. This is my Monday morning. How has your Monday been so far?

* For the price they are asking for, I simply assume their sheets are gilded.

** Is it just me or does this somehow sound dirty to anybody else?

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Gay apparel as in holiday parties. Of course. Tis the season of office holiday parties where alliances are formed, enemies are made, and by the end of night, everybody is drunk enough to tell the person whom you absolutely hate when sober, “I love you. Seriously, man. You. are. the. best!”

New York Magazine is kind enough to give us a guide on “How Drunk Can You Get at Your Office Holiday Party” with a handy dandy notebook printable guide that you can tuck into your bra and bring with you. Better remember to check on it though while you are still sober enough to read it in the bathroom stall because any good office holiday party will not have adequate lighting for reading. Duh.

Cog in the machine, while suffers in silence the rest of the 364 days, gets to have the MOST FUN EVER at the office party. “I hate my job so much I don’t even fucking care any more.” That’s the attitude that will get you through the night!

I’ve told you that I get typecast all the time, right? Well, it happened again. A friend of mine Facebook-tagged me:

CHRISTMAS OFFICE PARTY– Use the first 10 people on your friends list. Don’t Cheat:

Running around topless singing Jingle Bells: 
Spiked the punch then drank most of it :
Dancing on the desk singing “Can’t Touch this”:
… Has Rolodex making prank calls:
Spinning around in office chair screaming:
Locked in the bathroom hugging the toilet:
Passed out under their desk:
Sitting on copier making Christmas cards:
Throwing fruitcake at people outside:
Playing spin the bottle with cleaning crew:

Guess where my name fell? Yup. The first one. I just don’t think it will ever happen because I cannot sing worth a damn.

Also? I just survived our mega office holiday party last week and I’ll have you know that I kept my clothes on the whole night. And I did not spill any drink. Woohoo! WIN!

The sad truth is I could not have gotten hammered even if I wanted to. The OPEN bar? Was not really open. They only served beer and wine. INCONCEIVABLE. ikr?! So the whole night I kept on going from the 5th floor to the bar at the hotel lobby to get my own drink on. Yes, my dear Internet, I paid for my own premium vodka at an office party with an open bar. I had four with a heavy pour and I woke up with NO hangover and NO headache whatsoever. Win? WIN!

Despite the open bar not being really open, I had a lot of fun at the party talking to random people, including coworkers whom I had never actually spoken to until that night and their wives, my boss, his wife, his boss, his boss’s wife, someone else’s bosses, someone else’s bosses’ wives, etc etc etc. Problem is? I kept on thinking, “The missis must be really really bored. Probably want to poke their eyes out with a fork if they have to face another forced conversation. Quick. Let me say something genuinely funny to amuse them.”

At one point, I offered one of the missis to beat up her husband for her. I guess I am not going to get a promotion, again.

I also told a coworker whom I had not really spoken to before until that night that I love his wife. Huh. I don’t think it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between me and him…

But the BEST part of the night? I finally got a picture taken of me in which I do not have ginormous fat arms that look like they are about the size of my torso.

Finally. A picture of me with NO fat arms. Yeah! This goes to prove that lighting is everything.

This heavily cropped picture somehow focuses on the cruel fact “Where the fuck did my waist go?”  Oh hell. I will be happy with the NO fat arm for now. At least I am not making my friend look like she’s naked…

It's that horrifying moment when your friend's "fat arm" makes you look naked...

p.s. Yes. YES! I confess. I wrote this post just so I could post this picture. You are welcome. And if you spill anything on your clothes, take them off, take a nekkid picture, send that and the dry cleaning bill to moi. xxoo

No related posts.

Google announced Google Music (its answer to Apple iTune + Amazon Cloud) last week. I immediately started uploading all our music files to the massive google cloud. (It by the way took almost six days to finish). This plus my existing music drive in the Amazon cloud means that when the Apocalypse comes? I am all set on the disaster recovery front for my music files. Way to go, me! Because it is very important to keep a record of Air Supply and Petshop Boys for the resistance army while they fight against the aliens zombies (fine!) for human survival.

Then we received the Amazon Kindle Fire, and all hell broke loose. I have been “forced” to listen to Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Cloud Player, Google Android player and iTune. This is Big Love – Digital Music Edition.

(Yeah yeah yeah. There are more music services such as the old standby Rhapsody, last.fm, and the very intriguing turntable.fm. But I would like to be able to sleep once in a while so thank you very much…)

Hilarity ensued.

I did learn something though: Right before you get on the highway with your kids in the backseat, do NOT start streaming your music and hit Shuffle All IF Cee Lo Green is in your music collection. Just sayin’

At one point I caught myself listening to music from Amazon cloud, checking my Google Music stash on my Android phone and tweeting and Facebooking from iPad.

I felt like Lord Voldemort with my soul being divided into seven parts. Yeah, I need a strong shot of Ritalin.

And a break from trying to organize my digital life.

So I went and got a 10-plus-lbs honeybaked ham today.

Have a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving!

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When it comes to all these flash sale websites, I am a marketer’s dream girl. I think I give people in advertising like Don Draper wet dreams. I click on every email that MyHabit.com and Gilt.com sends me every day.

This undying support for people like Don Draper + the promise of free shipping and free return + the innate laziness that binds me to the idea of Internet shopping + fear of salespeople + firm believer in trying on clothing in the comfort of my own home + lure of the mental image of myself wearing boots in fall + never ever learning from the lesson called “Incongruity Detected” =

Guess who came home to two giant boxes that Mr. Monk can fit in and five pairs of boots?

Yes, I can hear all your screaming from here.

Now don’t get too excited. They are all going back because huh, I found out that my calves are the size and shape of winter melons.

And when I could not pull the zip shut along my left calve, I also discovered that my left leg is much thicker than my right leg, probably due to the Deep Vein Thrombosis (blood clog) that ran along my entire left leg when I was pregnant with Mr. Monk.

As I was sitting on the stairs heaving and grunting, trying to get these damn boots on and the zippers to zip up, I felt like I could understand the sadness and humiliation that Cinderella’s stepsisters must have felt. Ok, maybe just one of them. But still. I am Team Cinderella’s Stepsister now.

I did manage to get one pair of the boots on, with zippers up all the way. And I won’t lie to you, I liked what I saw. I started pulling on various dresses and skirts (because there is no way they are going over my jeans, get it? They are already busting at the seams… ) in my closet while wearing these boots. The dresses and skirts were transformed in a way that was totally unexpected with a pair of boots on. There is just something about boots that make you feel sexy and badass at the same time. They make you want to stride across a room with your head held up high, make you want to sing:

These boots are made for walking… Well, not really. There is no way these boots are made for walking. They are more like medieval torture device. But still, they look G.R.E.A.T on me.

Fortunately, I did not get carried away by self-indulgence because my teenage boy piped up, “Mom. You look weird.”

“What do you mean I look weird?”

“Well, take them off. They are not your style!”

“What IS my style?”

“They are not you!”

“What is my style then? … Jeans and t-shirts?”

“Yes.” He sounded exasperated now. “You look too hip in them.”

Well…

Unfortunately, all fun had to come to an end. It’s time to take them off, mostly because I was suffering stabbing pangs from leg cramp caused by shoving my calve into a sausage casing. More heaving and grunting. Midway through, the boots were stuck. By stuck I mean I had to pry the boots away from my calve by depressing the fat on my calve with my fingers while pushing the shaft down inch by inch. Eventually I had to give up and yelled for Mr. Monk to come and help me. This scene now bore some eerie similarity to the children’s story “The Great Enormous Giant Turnip”… complete with Mr. Monk falling backwards and landing on his tushie.

Hilarity ensued.

Coda: I am sitting here typing while wearing the boots. Yes I put them back on when the kids fell asleep. Yes I stare at them admiringly once in a while. No I am not so sure now that I am sending ALL of them back. I wonder how much liposuction costs?

“Are you ready boots? Start walkin’.”

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Pumpkin spice latte is back!

I am not ashamed to admit that every year I look forward to the arrival of fall because of this.

I have been waiting for fall... partly because of this.

You have heard this a million and one times, I am sure. But fall really is my favorite season.

Despite the annoying process of reorganizing my clothes and shoes according to the change in season. This year I think I am going to be honest with myself and get rid of the pile of clothes that I have mentally labeled as “Keep for when I am back to my pre-kid weight”. If it has not happened yet after thirteen years, it probably ain’t gonna happen.

I went to bed at almost 4 am and when I woke up at 8, I still had Amy Winehouse on my mind. Her voice is haunting.

I need to make a confession: (Because it is funny in a tragic, pathetic kind of way. And also because I believe somewhere out there, someone is going to read this and go, “O.M.G. I thought I was the only one that did that! I can now finally stop feeling guilty!”. Or so I hope. You are welcome. And feel free to pretend so I feel better about the whole thing and can finally stop feeling guilty. Thank You!)

Last Wednesday, I took my usual 6:30 train home and when I got into my car and started driving towards the TKD school to pick up Mr. Monk, it was already 7:15. I had been listening to, yes, sorry, here she is again, Amy Winehouse on repeat, when the screen on my phone flashed, indicating an incoming call. It was not a number that I knew so I decided to ignore it. I mean, who actually calls people now, right?

Here is the thing: whenever I listen to music, I get lost in it. I really really do. That’s probably the point of good music to begin with, and probably happens to everybody so yeah you are probably smirking. But I mean I forget everybody else. Including my kids. I forget that I am a mother. A wife. A cog in the machine. I am just me. Enveloped in the sound and the beat. Me alone with myself. In my mind, I am doing all sorts of interpretive dance to the music, often in a way BEFORE incongruity is detected.

When the phone “rang” (how many phones nowadays that still actually ring?) for the third time, I decided to answer it.

“Mom?”

“Who’s this?” I actually forgot that I have a kid.

“It’s me.”

“Who?”

“Name withheld for protection.”

Oh, right. My son. My youngest child.

Oh shit. Something must have happened since TKD did not end till 7:30. Any time you get a phone call from your child, there is trouble at hand. They don’t really call you just to find out how you are doing until they become parents themselves.

“Where are you?! What happened?!”

“I am at gymnastics.”

At this moment I became completely disoriented because my oldest is the one that has gymnastics practices. Did I get my children mixed up? What’s happening to me?

“Why are you at gymnastics?” I was genuinely confused.

“You told me to come find brother if you don’t show up at the choir practice…”

I had completely forgotten that he had choir practice every Wednesday and I was supposed to pick him up at 6:45 pm. At 6:45 pm, I was still on the train! Just like that. Forgot about my child. A black hole opened up in my memory and he fell through it.

The feeling that you have in your gut when you suddenly realize you have forgot to pick up your child from somewhere?

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My favorite album of all time is A Night at the Opera by Queen. On some days I would simply listen to the whole album over and over again when I am driving. Volume turned way high. Windows down. (And yes, it helps me imagine myself as a badass. Why?)

On some nights, I prowl through YouTube, watching Freddie Mercury, and cry.

I wish I’ve had the chance to see him perform live on stage.

The regret gnaws at me and that’s why I am obsessively staring at the screen, daring him to come back to live.

Tonight I am specifically obsessed with I Want to Break Free. I have just been staring at this picture for about 5 minutes. And it is 1 am now. Yeah, I know. I need help.

Another person lately that’s been making me really really sad and mad at the same time is Amy Winehouse. When I am not replaying the A Night at the Opera CD in my car, I am listening to her Back to Black.  I cannot get enough of the rawness in her voice. When she sang, (and yes it’s a cliche) she poured her entire self into it, she did not hold back. Perhaps that was why she was so lost at the end. The tepid air was conjured into a torrent of emotions. Here’s little old me, listening to the breaking in her voice as I hit the repeat button over and over, cursing at her for getting herself killed at the age of 27.

With a talent so vast as hers, it’s almost like her cross to bear to give us more. To give us all.

As I watched most of the videos of her live concerts though, it soon became obvious that she was lost, in pain. In some she could not even remember the lyrics. Such talent. It’s heart-breaking. It makes listening to her songs a multi-faceted exercise.

Fortunately, there is this new video of Tony Bennett singing Body and Soul with her that hints at the joy she must have felt (when she could) from being able to create beauty such as this.

This is 100% random rambling. Tis 2:30 am now. I have been suffering from severe allergy attack this week. I cannot breathe. I am probably delirious and hallucinating.

Oh how I wish I could watch Freddie live on stage. This is going on my Bucket List. So you know, I will go through life without being able to cross off all items on my bucket list. So be it.

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Conversations that happened yesterday…

(Proving that thank goodness I work fulltime so I don’t spend too much time talking to my kids…)

[On the way to lunch]

13-year-old: My friend is jealous. He thinks we have the coolest license plate ever! [Be rest assured: It is dorky.]

8-year-old: Oh, mom, we should keep this car forever so we can keep our license plate.

13-year-old: Dummy. We can keep our license plate even when we have a new car.

Me: Actually they have made the rule so that people can pass down their license plates to their kids.

8-year-old: You mean when you die, we can have the license plate?! Cool!

Me (failing to be concerned by his excitement):  Actually you two will probably fight over it. We need to get another cool license plate.

[A lengthy discussion ensued regarding what other cool (and equally dorky) license plate we could get]

[At the restaurant]

Me: Ugh. I forgot my ring… Speaking of my ring. I need to update my will. Now that I have lost both my engagement ring and my wedding ring, I no longer have anything to pass down to you.

13-year-old: Nice job, mom!

8-year-old: You mean you have written down what we are getting when you die? When you die, do we get everything?

Me: Technically, no. When a person dies, and if they’re married, their spouse would get everything. That’s how most people set up their wills. Oh, remember that Mr. Monk episode? (Yeah, we are polite to fictional TV characters) Remember the guy had to pretend that his father died after his stepmother? They both already had kids when they got married. The husband left his son everything; the wife left his daughters everything. The man actually died before his wife, so the son would have lost everything. That’s why he went through the trouble to make sure that people think his stepmother died after before his dad.

[Pause while the boys digested the twisted plot line]

8-year-old: Can you do me a favor? Can you and dad never get a divorce so this thing won’t get so complicated?

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You can say that I have given up on attracting more male readers… Since I am of the Drastic Measure type of bitches: It is All or Nothing to me, I have decided to actively repel men*, esp. the straight kind. Let’s go all the way, baby!

This is a real book.

The Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative asked women, young, old, rich, and poor, “What really, really gets you hot?” Armed with their findings, they worked day and night to create Porn for Women.

(Granted, the book should have been more accurately titled “Porn for Straight Women”… And some of the things attributed to the men/actors are plainly condescending, if not insulting, to women IMO, such as “Ooh Look! The NFL Playoffs are today. I bet we’ll have no trouble parking at the craft’s fair.”…  At any rate, I hope you all get the chuckle or drool out of these…)

Some choice pornographic photos from the book:

I found the following on Flickr:

(This one, to me, is more about fairness: Yup. If you make the mess, you clean up the mess. IMO, most men that claim they love to cook do not have to clean up the pots and pans afterwards. If they had to clean up afterwards, they would not have used three pots to cook one dish!)

As Liz Lemon would say:

I want to go to there.

* I understand that this is an affectatious** statement: by claiming that I am actively repelling men, I am implying that otherwise they would have visited this blog in drones. It’s like I prefer to think to myself that people dislike me because 1) they are racists, 2) they hate my gut. The truth is, I am deeply aware of this, they probably simply dislike me because they dislike me.

** The use of the word “affectatious” is itself ironically affectatious.***

*** The fact that I pointed the above out is an act of affectation.

**** And so on, and so forth.

***** I don’t really worry about the fact that I have few male readers. In order to prove myself to you, I will talk about menstrual cycles next.

****** Why is “MEN” in the word “MENstrual”?

******* Come to think of it, I think Elly has beat me to it [i.e. talking about menstrual cycles] with this video she posted on her blog called “Her First Period”.

******** I really should turn my footnotes into a separate blog post. And I am writing my footnotes before I write the post proper, and am having more fun doing this.

******** Do people even read these footnotes?

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I heard this study that was published this May on the radio today. The headline is:

Men relax best when wives are doing housework chores!

My first question was: How is it possible that I did not hear about this until now?! Is the Universe conspiring to keep this earth-shattering news from me?

You are probably thinking: “I need a study to tell me this?” I know. But it is always nice to have your suspicion confirmed by rigorous scientific research.

For starters, the researchers “measured stress hormones and daily activities”, specifically, they “sampled saliva repeatedly to measure cortisol, which increases in stressful situations”, a most objective measurement: so there is no arguing that women only feel more stressed because they bitch about everything and they CARE MORE about whether the dishes are done, the laundry is folded, and the floor is not covered with random objects.

The study was done with researchers observing “30 dual-earner couples in Los Angeles, each with at least one child ages 8-10. Most had two or three children. The average marriage was 13 years and the average age was 41… Over four days, two weekend days and two weekdays, researchers tracked activities at 10-minute intervals.”

And here are the highlights of their findings:

• For women, healthier cortisol levels resulted when their husbands spent more time pitching in on housework
• For husbands, more leisure time was linked with healthier cortisol when their wives spent more time doing house-related work and less time in leisure.
• Men, when they come back home, tend to be alone in a room.
• Women, when get back home, tend to be with one or more children doing childcare.
• When women are alone, they tend to be doing housework; When men are alone, they tend to be relaxing.

(Note that none of these families have YOUNG CHILDREN. I can only imagine the discrepancy to be even more skewed between men and women were babies and toddlers present in these households studied)

You know what? All my feminist sisters could throw banana peels at me. I am not outraged by the research findings at all. Nope.  Au contraire!

I. AM. ELATED.

Why?

Because I am going to remember this research next time I hear about some other woman talking about how her husband pitches in, 50-50, and then I will not secretly hide in the bathroom and cry.

Because I am normal. I am NOT alone. I am part of the statistics. Part of the cogs that make up normalcy. Like the common stock photos showing a man reading newspaper while his wife vacuums and him lifting his legs up for the vacuum out of consideration.

Kapow! Woohoo! I am doing a happy dance while I survey the disaster zone that is our house and also my weekend project. (If you call housework a PROJECT, you feel more accomplished and less housewifery…)

It is truly a relief to know I am simply part of the normalcy.

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